Projecting the Future in Germany of the nineteenth century

Journal of Art Historiography Number 9 December 2013

Projecting the future in German art historiography

of the nineteenth century:

Franz Kugler, Karl Schnaase, and Gottfried

Semper1

Henrik Karge

Figure 1 Franz Kugler, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel at the lectern, 1828. Frankfurt am Main,

Goethe-Haus – Freies Deutsches Hochstift. Diathek TU Dresden

Hegel’s provocative concept of the end of art – or, more precisely, of the

retrospective character of art – has generated much reflection and controversy since

the early nineteenth century. Most discussions of art’s end take Hegel’s philosophy

as a starting point, but the context in which Hegel developed his theories about art

was quite different from that of today.

The main source for this famous concept comes from a passage in Heinrich

Gustav Hotho’s introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, which Hotho edited

and published in 1835, after Hegel’s death:

Art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the

past. Thereby it has lost for us genuine truth and life, and has instead been

transferred into our ideas instead of maintaining its earlier necessity in

reality and occupying its higher place.2

1 For the English correction of this article, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Jeanne-Marie

Musto. 2 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1975, 11. Original text: ‘In allen diesen Beziehungen ist und bleibt die Kunst nach der

Seite ihrer höchsten Bestimmung für uns ein Vergangenes. Damit hat sie für uns auch die echte

Wahrheit und Lebendigkeit verloren und ist mehr in unsere Vorstellung verlegt, als daß sie in der

Wirklichkeit ihre frühere Notwendigkeit behauptete und ihren höheren Platz einnähme.’ Georg

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke, xiii: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, I, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp

Verlag, 1986, 25.

Henrik Karge Projecting the future in German art historiography of the nineteenth

century: Franz Kugler, Karl Schnaase, and Gottfried Semper

2

This formulation doesn’t appear in Hegel’s own publications, but its general

authenticity is guaranteed by the responses of a number of contemporaries. The

composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartoldy, for instance, was surprised by the

philosopher’s opinion that the art of his time was ‘mausetot’ (‘stone dead’) – given

his simultaneous passion for the living theatre.3 The German philosopher (fig. 1)

didn’t really assume, of course, that the art of his time would come to an end, but he

noted a decisive break between the natural presence of the art of older times and the

reflexive character of contemporaneous art: ‘Art invites us to intellectual

consideration, and that not for the purpose of creating art again, but for knowing

philosophically what art is.’4

This is the starting point for the modern discussions of the ‘end of art’

promoted by the philosopher Arthur C. Danto, who has been publishing on the

subject since 1984.5 In his book After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of

History (1997), he tied the artistic epoch of modernism, beginning with Van Gogh

and Gauguin, to Hegel’s concept of modern reflexiveness. Danto emphasized ‘that

mimetic representation had become less important than some kind of reflection on

the means and methods of representation. […] In effect, modernism sets itself at a

distance from the previous history of art.’6

Whereas this conception may be applied – in a somewhat simplified manner

– to the leading currents of twentieth-century modernism, it doesn’t go well with

the complexity of contemporary art. In her book The Past is the Present; It’s the Future,

Too (2012), Christine Ross demonstrates how deeply the art of the present is

concerned with archives and the relics of the past, with memory practices and re-

enactments, with history and archaeology, detecting a ‘temporal turn’ in

3 Günter Nicolin, ed., Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1970, 480, nr.

669. More sources in: Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Ist die Kunst tot und zu Ende? Überlegungen zu

Hegels Ästhetik, Erlangen and Jena: Verlag Palm & Enke, 1993, 4-7. The preserved records of Hegel’s

lectures are less specific on this point. See esp. the record of Hegel’s lecture in the summer semester of

1823, written by his pupil Heinrich Gustav Hotho: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die

Philosophie der Kunst, ed. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2003, 6. 4 Hegel, Aesthetics, 11. ‘Die Kunst lädt uns zur denkenden Betrachtung ein, und zwar nicht zu dem

Zwecke, Kunst wieder hervorzurufen, sondern, was die Kunst sei, wissenschaftlich zu erkennen.’

Hegel, Vorlesungen, 26. This thought was inspired by German writings of the late eighteenth century,

especially Friedrich Schiller’s paper On naïve and sentimental poetry (1795). 5 Arthur C. Danto, ‘The end of art’, in: Berel Lang, ed., The Death of Art, New York: Haven Publishers,

1984, 5-38. 6 Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art. Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1997, 8. See page 17, note 1, for a history of modern writings on the subject.

Compare also: Heinz Friedrich and others, Ende der Kunst – Zukunft der Kunst, Munich: Deutscher

Kunstverlag, 1985; Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art, trans. Christopher S. Wood, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1987; Arthur C. Danto and others, Estética después del fin del arte. Ensayos

sobre Arthur Danto, Boadilla del Monte (Madrid): A. Machado Libros, 2005.



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Figure 2 Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880 – 1983 (Cultural history 1880 – 1983), 1983. New York, Dia

Center for the Arts. Photo: Florian Holzherr. Submitted by Magenta on Sun, 09/06/2009 – 02:15

contemporary art (fig. 2).7 ‘It is the case that artists today have adopted a more

historiographical outlook on time and conversely a more temporal outlook on

history […].’8 Referring to Dieter Roelstraete’s essay on the ‘archaeological

imaginary in art’, Ross points out the problems of this artistic trend: ‘The current

historiographic preoccupation in art has in fact become an aesthetics of

compensation for art’s “inability to grasp or even look at the present, much less to

excavate the future.”’9

All questions of time are experiencing a renaissance in contemporary

thought. Aspects of the present are being combined with those of the past in

imagining the future. In leaving behind the historical amnesia of twentieth-century

modernism, the art and architecture of today recall strongly the complexity of

historicism in the nineteenth century.

***

The topicality of history among twenty-first-century scholars and artists adds fresh

weight to the question of how those of the century before last conceived

interrelations between past, present and future. The starting point shall be again

Hegel’s idea of the end of art, precisely speaking: of the past-time character of

contemporary art.

7 An early example is Hanne Darboven’s monumental installation Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 from 1983

in the Dia Art Foundation, New York. Cf. Dan Adler, Hanne Darboven. Cultural History 1880-1983,

London: Afterall Books, 2009. 8 Christine Ross, The Past is the Present; It’s the Future, Too. The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art, New

York and London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012, 39. 9 Ross, Past is the Present, 44; included citation: Dieter Roelstraete, ‘The way of the shovel: on the

archaeological imaginary in art’, e-flux journal 4, March 2009, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/51.



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The core of this concept is the assumption of a fundamental difference

between former epochs and the present regarding the importance of art in society.

In Hegel’s view, the sculptures of ancient Greece had been the embodiments of

mythical deities and moral laws – in his Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of

the Spirit) of 1807 he had already named this phenomenon ‘Kunstreligion’ – ‘religion

of art’.10 Even Christian artworks of the Middle Ages that had been venerated as

representations of saints stood for a transcendental truth. This extraordinary status

of art within society could not be conserved in the modern, secularized society that

followed the Reformation and Enlightenment. According to Hegel, the loss of

transcendental truth was nevertheless balanced by the emancipation of art from

religion. Modern artists could freely portray the complexity of nineteenth-century

life.

It cannot be ignored that Hegel held a neoclassical opinion of art and

connected the ideal of beauty with the sculptures of ancient Greece.11 Thus he was

sceptical of the subjectivity expressed by painters of the German Romantic

movement and their followers in the Düsseldorf School of painting.12 This

scepticism dimmed his expectations concerning future developments in the arts.

Hegel’s understanding of the essence of art as inherently historical granted

art history a new and prominent position. It is tempting to connect this

understanding with the rise of art history as an academic discipline, which occurred

more or less around the same time.13 In actuality, however, Hegel was not central to

the formation of the discipline. The five lectures on aesthetics that he held at the

universities of Heidelberg and Berlin between 1818 and 1829 were only known

within a relatively small circle of students, and their late publication by Hotho

between 1835 and 1838 didn’t deeply influence the development of contemporary

art history.

All the same, it is remarkable that both art historians who laid the

foundations of modern art historiography in Germany – Karl Schnaase (1798-1875)

and Franz Kugler (1808-1858) (figs. 3-4) – heard Hegel lecture in their early years

(fig. 1).14 What is more, Kugler’s drawing of Hegel at the lectern from 1828 is the

10 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke, iii: Phänomenologie des Geistes, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp

Verlag, 1986, 512-544. Original title: System der Wissenschaft. Erster Theil, die Phänomenologie des Geistes,

Bamberg and Würzburg: Joseph Anton Goebhardt, 1807. Compare Vittorio Hösle, Hegels System. Der

Idealismus der Subjektivität und das Problem der Intersubjektivität, vol. 2, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag,

1988, 589-638; Regine Prange, Die Geburt der Kunstgeschichte. Philosophische Ästhetik und empirische

Wissenschaft, Köln: Deubner Verlag für Kunst, Theorie & Praxis, 2004, 72-78. 11 Cf. Hösle, Hegels System, vol. 2, 598-599. 12 Cf. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, ‘Die Kritik an der Düsseldorfer Malerschule bei Hegel und den

Hegelianern’. In: Gerhard Kurz, ed., Düsseldorf in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte (1750-1850), Düsseldorf:

Verlag Schwann, 1984, 263-288. See in general: Bettina Baumgärtel, ed., Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und

ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819-1918, 2 vols., Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2011. 13 Cf. Prange, Geburt der Kunstgeschichte, 71-93. 14 Schnaase came under Hegel’s sway during his law studies in Heidelberg in 1817 and followed the

philosopher one year later to Berlin; Kugler attended at least some of Hegel’s lectures in 1828 and 1829

and was a close friend of Karl Rosenkranz, one of Hegel’s most important pupils and author of a



5

only existing authentic portrait of the philosopher at work.15 Neither Kugler nor

Schnaase, however, were Hegelians. Their conceptions of art were formed by

Romantic sources as well as by the empirical turn of Germany’s intellectual culture

around 1830. For these reasons, they approached the question of the future of art in

a completely different manner than had Hegel.

Kugler’s nearly total abstention from philosophical questions and his

concentration on facts about artists and artifacts enabled him to address, for the first

time ever, art history as a whole, comprising all epochs, cultures and nations

according to the knowledge of his time (including, for instance, the Pre-Columbian

cultures of America) (fig. 5). All this was achieved in a single book of nearly a

handbook of literary history (Handbuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Poesie, 1832-33) which clearly

served as a model for Kugler’s handbooks. Cf. Henrik Karge, ‘Franz Kugler und Karl Schnaase – zwei

Projekte zur Etablierung der “Allgemeinen Kunstgeschichte“’, in: Michel Espagne, Bénédicte Savoy

and Céline Trautmann-Waller, eds., Franz Theodor Kugler. Deutscher Kunsthistoriker und Berliner Dichter,

Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010, 83-104, esp. 89-91. 15 Cf. Heinrich Dilly, ‘Kunsthistorische Studien, “weniger mit der Schreibfeder als mit dem

Zeichenstifte gemacht“. Franz Kuglers Zeichenkunst’, in: Espagne, Savoy and Trautmann-Waller,

Franz Theodor Kugler, 45-68, esp. 49-53.

Figure 3 Joseph von Kopf, Portrait bust of Karl Schnaase, 1875. Berlin, Neues Museum.

Photo: Andreas Kilger. Author’s archive.

Figure 4 Bernhard Afinger, Portrait bust of Franz Kugler, around 1870. Berlin, Neues

Museum. Photo: Andreas Kilger. Author’s archive.



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thousand pages, entitled Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (‘Handbook of art history’),

published in 1842.16

Figure 5 Denkmäler der Kunst zur Übersicht ihres Entwickelungs-Ganges […], edited by Ernst Guhl and

Joseph Caspar, begun by August Voit (containing plates to illustrate Franz Kugler’s Handbuch der

Kunstgeschichte), vol. 1, fascicle 1, 1845, plate A II: Baudenkmäler aus Südamerika und Mexiko (Monuments

from South America and Mexico). Author’s archive

16 Franz Kugler, Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, Stuttgart: Verlag Ebner & Seubert, 1842. The only recent

book about Franz Kugler is the above mentioned: Espagne, Savoy and Trautmann-Waller, Franz

Theodor Kugler. Cf. also: Dan Karlholm, Handböckernas konsthistoria. Om skapandet av ‘allmän konsthistoria’

i Tyskland under 1800-talet, Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1996; Prange, Geburt der

Kunstgeschichte, 144-147; Henrik Karge, ‘Welt-Kunstgeschichte. Franz Kugler und die geographische

Fundierung der Kunsthistoriographie in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in: Kunsttopographie. Theorie

und Methode in der Kunstwissenschaft und Archäologie seit Winckelmann, Stendal: Winckelmann-

Gesellschaft, 2003, 19-31; Henrik Karge‚ ‘El arte americano antiguo y el canon de la antigüedad clásica.

El “Nuevo Continente“ en la historiografía del arte de la primera mitad del siglo XIX / Die

altamerikanische Kunst und der Kanon der klassischen Antike. Der “neue Kontinent“ in der

Kunsthistoriographie der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in: Helga von Kügelgen, ed., Herencias

indígenas, tradiciones europeas y la mirada europea / Indigenes Erbe, europäische Traditionen und der

europäische Blick, Madrid and Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Vervuert, 2002, 315-374, on Kugler: 331-334,

351-354; Henrik Karge, ‘Zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Kulturgeschichte. Die Entfaltung des

Systems der Epochenstile im 19. Jahrhundert’, in: Bruno Klein and Bruno Boerner, eds., Stilfragen zur

Kunst des Mittelalters. Eine Einführung, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2006, 47-50; Heinrich Dilly,

‘Franz Theodor Kugler (1808-1858) ’, in: Michel Espagne and Bénédicte Savoy, eds., Dictionnaire des

historiens d’art allemands, Paris: CNRS éditions, 2010, 117-130; Timo Niegsch, ‘Franz Theodor Kugler,

Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte’, in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, ed., Hauptwerke der

Kunstgeschichtsschreibung, Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 2010, 261-265.



7

Characteristic is the following passage in Kugler’s preface: ‘The whole of our

discipline (Kunstgeschichte, art history) is still very young; it is an empire that we are

still busy conquering, […] so it is difficult, often nearly impracticable to lay a

geographical net upon that new empire and to separate provinces, districts and

communities from each other.’17 Kugler presents the self-image of an intellectual

conquistador, but his methodology consists of interweaving empirical facts into a

coherent stylistic history of art.

It is remarkable that Kugler concluded his book with a short chapter on the

art of his own day: ‘Blick auf die Kunstbestrebungen der Gegenwart’.18 On these

eight pages he revealed a distinctly Prussian, even specifically Berlin-centred

perspective on contemporary art. But his exposition is nonetheless interesting

because he interprets the complex situation of architecture and fine arts of his day as

the consequence of the long and chequered history of art since the fifteenth century.

More precisely, he sees contemporary art as resulting from three artistic

developments in play since the mid-eighteenth century: a tendency towards

naturalness, the Greek revival, and the Gothic (which Kugler calls ‘Germanic’)

revival.19

Kugler also offered his own recommendations concerning future artistic

developments. On the one hand, artists should free themselves from a narrow

relationship with historical models – classical or medieval – in order to create

monumental works that demonstrated their personal talents. On the other hand, he

warned about excesses of individuality.

Kugler summed up the future potential of the arts in the last sentences of his

epoch-making handbook:

The art of our time is extraordinarily rich in means and forces. If these means

and these forces, each in their own measure, will be guided to one common

goal; if they will once again conform to their common root, true monumental

art; if, above all, architecture will regain an independent and lively shape – if

all this will be the case, we can expect that the things that have begun in our

days will develop in the future to their highest peaks. May the significance of

architecture, nearly forgotten for four centuries, be again appreciated, and

may architecture itself begin again to lead the way!20

17 ‘das Ganze unsrer Wissenschaft ist noch gar jung, es ist ein Reich, mit dessen Eroberung wir noch

eben erst beschäftigt sind, […] da ist es schwer, oft fast unausführbar, ein behagliches geographisches

Netz darüber zu legen und Provinzen, Bezirke, Kreise und Weichbilder mit saubern Farbenlinien von

einander zu sondern.’ Kugler, Handbuch, x. 18 Kugler, Handbuch, 853-860. 19 Kugler, Handbuch, 855-857. 20 ‘Die Kunst unsrer Zeit ist überaus reich an Mitteln und an Kräften. Wenn diese Mittel und diese

Kräfte, ein jedes nach seinem Maasse, einem gemeinsamen Ziele entgegengeführt werden; wenn sie

sich dem gemeinsamen Stamme, der eigentlich monumentalen Kunst, wiederum anreihen; wenn vor



8

Kugler wished architecture to be the guiding artistic discipline of the future.

This idea might be inspired by the model of Gothic cathedrals as the greatest artistic

achievements of the Middle Ages – produced through the coordinated efforts of

artists and artisans working in diverse media to realize an architectural plan. For

Kugler, the highest ranking of all Gothic cathedrals was that of Cologne, built from

1248 according to French models, but surpassing them in architectural perfection,

even though it remained largely incomplete at the end of the Middle Ages.21 It is a

peculiar coincidence that the Prussian king Frederick William IV laid the

cornerstone for the completion of this cathedral in 1842 (figs. 6-7), the same year in

which Kugler’s Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte was published. The Gothic cathedral as

a model for the arts headed by architecture would have a great future: it was still

the guiding idea of the Bauhaus manifesto of 1919 as is shown by Lyonel Feininger’s

title woodcut (fig. 8).22 In 1842, it manifested the desire to reorganize the arts so as to

overcome the chaotic complexity of contemporary artistic production.

Allem die Architektur wiederum eine selbständig lebenvolle Gestalt gewinnt, so haben wir von dem,

was in unsern Tagen begonnen, das Höchste zu erwarten. Möge man die Bedeutung der Architektur,

die seit Jahrhunderten fast vergessen ist, wiederum erkennen, und möge die Architektur selbst sich

aufmachen, der Zeit wiederum voranzuschreiten!’ Kugler, Handbuch, 860. 21 Kugler, Handbuch, 550-552. 22 There were many other modernist adaptations of the myth of the Gothic cathedral: cf. Regine Prange,

Das Kristalline als Kunstsymbol – Bruno Taut und Paul Klee. Zur Reflexion des Abstrakten in Kunst und

Kunsttheorie der Moderne, Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1991, 127-140;

Figure 6 King Frederick William IV at the cornerstone ceremony of the completion of Cologne Cathedral in 1842,

contemporary illustration. Diathek TU Dresden

Figure 7 Cologne Cathedral nearing completion in 1880, contemporary photograph. Prometheus Bildarchiv,

Cologne. Diathek TU Dresden



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Figure 8 Lyonel Feininger, woodcut: Gothic cathedral, Bauhaus-Manifest, 1919. Prometheus Bildarchiv,

Cologne. Diathek TU Dresden

Kugler was vacillating between, on the one hand, enthusiasm for the variety

of artistic achievements and new techniques so characteristic of the nineteenth

century,23 and, on the other hand, the conviction that the arts needed to submit to a

new artistic order under the guidance of architecture.

Kugler was not the only pioneer in producing handbooks that attempted to

cover the history of art of all epochs and cultures. Karl Schnaase (fig. 9),24 ten years

older than Kugler,25 published the first volume of his monumental work Geschichte

Florens Deuchler, ‘Le passé présent dans les arts: à propos du mythe moderne de la cathédrale’,

Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 54, 1997, 169-174. 23 Franz Kugler, a friend of important poets like Theodor Fontane and Theodor Storm, was intensely

involved into the literary and artistic life in Berlin. Cf. Leonore Koschnick, ‘Franz Kugler (1808-1858)

als Kunstkritiker und Kulturpolitiker’, Ph. D. thesis, Freie Universität, Berlin, 1985; Roland Berbig, ‘Ein

glückliches Maklertalent. Franz Kugler als literarischer Förderer’, in: Espagne, Savoy and Trautmann-

Waller, Franz Theodor Kugler, 231-244. 24 Some of the author’s articles on Schnaase: Henrik Karge, ‘“Die Kunst ist nicht das Maaß der

Geschichte“. Karl Schnaases Einfluß auf Jacob Burckhardt’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 78, 1996, 393-431;

‘Das Frühwerk Karl Schnaases. Zum Verhältnis von Ästhetik und Kunstgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert’,

in: Antje Middeldorf-Kosegarten, ed., Johann Dominicus Fiorillo. Kunstgeschichte und die romantische

Bewegung um 1800, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1997, 402-419; ‘Vom Konzert der Künste zum Kanon

der Kunstgeschichte: Karl Schnaase’, in: Christian Scholl, Sandra Richter and Oliver Huck, eds., Konzert

und Konkurrenz. Die Künste und ihre Wissenschaften im 19. Jahrhundert, Göttingen: Universitätsverlag,

2010, 93-105; ‘Karl Schnaase (1798-1875)’, in: Espagne and Savoy, Dictionnaire, 265-276; ‘Stil und

Epoche. Karl Schnaases dialektisches Modell der Kunstgeschichte’, in: Sabine Frommel and Antonio

Brucculeri, eds., L’idée du style dans l’historiographie artistique. Variantes nationales et transmissions, Rome:

Campisano Editore, 2012 (actually 2013), 35-48. 25 For more about the interrelations of both art historians see: Karge, ‘Franz Kugler und Karl Schnaase’.



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Figure 9 Eduard Steinbrück, Portrait of Karl Schnaase, oil painting, 1836. Düsseldorf, Stadtmuseum.

Author’s archive

der bildenden Künste (‘History of the fine arts’) one year after Kugler’s handbook, in

1843; the final volume of the first edition would be published in 1864.26 Instead of

Kugler’s terse arrangement of facts and monuments, Schnaase went into greater

detail and considered the cultural conditions of art historical processes. On this

account, the eight volumes of his compendium only reach the early Renaissance,

and never touch on questions of contemporary or future art.27

Schnaase was, however, in contact with contemporary artists. After his

university studies in Heidelberg and Berlin, he worked as a Prussian public

procurator in Düsseldorf between 1829 and 1848. During this time he made a name

for himself not only as an art historian but also as an intellectual mentor of the

Düsseldorf School of Painting, at the side of the poet Karl Immermann.28 Already in

26 Karl (Carl) Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Künste, 7 vols., Düsseldorf: Verlag Buddeus, 1843-1864;

second revised edition: 7 vols., Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1866-1876; vol. 8, Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert,

1879. 27 Cf. Henrik Karge, ‘Karl (auch Carl) Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Künste’, in: Naredi-Rainer,

ed., Hauptwerke, 394-399; Karge, ‘Zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Kulturgeschichte’, 51-54; Karge,

‘Stil und Epoche’; Karlholm, Handböckernas konsthistoria, esp. 110-116; Prange, Die Geburt der

Kunstgeschichte, 137-144; Katharina Krause, Klaus Niehr and Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz, eds., Bilderlust

und Lesefrüchte. Das illustrierte Kunstbuch von 1750 bis 1920, Leipzig: Seemann 2005, 110-112. 28 Cf. Henrik Karge, ‘“Denn die Kunst ist selbst nichts Absolutes…“ Karl Immermann, Karl Schnaase

und die Theorie der Düsseldorfer Malerschule’, in: Peter Hasubek, ed., Epigonentum und Originalität.



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Figure 10 Andreas Achenbach, View of the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf, 1831. Düsseldorf, Museum Kunstpalast.

Diathek TU Dresden

1831, Schnaase gave a programmatic lecture ‘Ueber die Richtung der Malerei

unserer Zeit’ (‘On the tendency of painting in our time’) at the Arts Society of

Rhineland and Westphalia.29 He integrated German painting of his time into the

broader narrative of European art since Raphael, emphasizing, in contrast to Hegel,

the blossoming – and the historical depth – of the Düsseldorf school. In Schnaase’s

opinion, the importance of contemporary painting derived from its dissociation

from the antique canon of the neo-classicists as well as from the medieval models of

the Nazarenes. Painting at the Düsseldorf Academy (fig. 10) presented a new

synthesis arising from the struggle between the neoclassical and the romantic

schools of art – a ‘third school of thought, that of our present time’, founded on the

belief ‘that both the [abstract] ideal and the [spiritually] meaningful are fateful for

the arts, that they have to be independent from all one-sided pretensions. This free

exercise of art has tended to integrate all achievements of former schools: studies of

Immermann und seine Zeit – Immermann und die Folgen. Frankfurt am Main etc.: Peter Lang, 1997, 111-

140; Henrik Karge, ‘“… erhielt die Praxis der Kunst hier ihr Komplement, die Theorie.“ Karl

Immermann, Karl Schnaase und Friedrich von Uechtritz als Mentoren der Düsseldorfer Malerschule’,

in: Baumgärtel, Düsseldorfer Malerschule, vol. 1, 62-75. 29 Karl Schnaase, ‘Ueber die Richtung der Malerei unserer Zeit. Vorgetragen in der General-

Versammlung des Kunstvereins für die Rheinlande und Westphalen 1831’, Kunstblatt 12, 1831, 325-336,

340, no. 82-85.



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antiquity and of nature, striving for beauty and valuing content, cheerfulness and

earnestness, all is demanded and permitted.’30

Schnaase turned against the traditional hierarchy of art forms in favour of an

intermingling of history and genre painting. His goal: to overcome the divide

between spirit and nature in the representation of man. Some paintings made by the

Düsseldorf artist Karl Friedrich Lessing, such as Die Hussitenpredigt (‘The Hussites’

prayer’) from 1836 (fig. 11),31 can be considered as realizations of Schnaase’s

demand for such a fusion of genres.

Figure 11 Karl Friedrich Lessing, Die Hussitenpredigt (The Hussites‘ Prayer), 1836. Berlin, Nationalgalerie.

Reproduction from: Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule und ihre internationale Ausstrahlung 1819-1918,

ed. Baumgärtel, vol. 2, 267

Four years before the publication of Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics,

Schnaase’s lecture breathes a more optimistic, almost enthusiastic spirit into

discussions of contemporary art. The art of the present was also the benchmark of

the extensive reflections on the philosophy and history of art embedded in

30 ‘So entstand denn aus ihr die dritte Richtung, die unsrer gegenwärtigen Zeit, welche, ohne den

Anspruch auf die höhere Bedeutung aufzugeben, von der Ansicht ausgieng, daß sowohl das Ideal als

auch das Bedeutsame der Kunst verderblich sey, daß sie vor Allem unbefangen von allen einseitigen

Ansprüchen seyn müsse. Diese freie Kunstübung hat alle Verdienste der frühern Richtungen sich

anzueignen gestrebt: Studium der Antike und der Natur, Streben nach Schönheit und nach der

Bedeutung des Inhalts, Heiterkeit und Ernst, alles ist gefordert und gestattet.’ Schnaase, ‘Ueber die

Richtung’, 325. 31 Cf. Baumgärtel, Düsseldorfer Malerschule, vol. 2, 265-268; Martina Sitt, Duell an der Wand. Carl Friedrich

Lessing. Die Hussitengemälde, Düsseldorf: Parerga, 2000.



13

Schnaase’s first great work: Niederländische Briefe (‘Netherlandish letters’) from 1834,

according to Karl Immermann a ‘Haupt- und Grundbuch’ (‘main and fundamental

book’) of the new discipline of art history.32 Both Schnaase and Kugler shared the

essential concept of a continuous evolution of modern art from Renaissance times to

the present, with ups and downs but without interruption.

Figure 12 Ludwig Persius, Friedenskirche, 1845-48, Potsdam, interior. Diathek TU Dresden

Schnaase cultivated a highly nuanced position concerning the development

of contemporary architecture. He articulated this in two articles in Deutsches

Kunstblatt and Christliches Kunstblatt in 1858 and 1860. In the first article, Schnaase

turned against the orientation of present-day church architecture, and towards

Gothic models. At the time, Gothic models were being promoted in a militant

manner by the ultramontane faction of the Catholic Church and their review Organ

für christliche Kunst.33 The second article goes into the stylistic options of

contemporary architects. According to Schnaase, architecture should correspond to

the needs and reflect the fundamental spirit of its own time, but such an architecture

32 Karl Schnaase, Niederländische Briefe, Stuttgart and Tübingen: Verlag J. G. Cotta, 1834. New edition:

Karl Schnaase, Niederländische Briefe. Mit einer Einleitung und einem Themenverzeichnis, ed. Henrik Karge,

Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms-Weidmann, 2010. See page lvii for the context of

Immermann’s words. Cf. also: Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art, New Haven and London:

Yale University Press, 1982, 31-43. 33 Karl (Carl) Schnaase, ‘Archäologischer Rückblick auf das Jahr 1857’, Deutsches Kunstblatt 9, 1858, 144-

148, 170-175, esp. 147-148. Schnaase defends his friend Wilhelm Lübke against the attacks of the

ultramontane Organ.



14

could not be created ex nihilo, without connection to the past. For this reason,

Schnaase conceded, medieval models were still important for religious architecture

Figure 13 Ernst Zwirner, Apollinariskirche, 1839-43, Remagen. Diathek TU Dresden

in the 19th century, but these models needed to be chosen with care. He deplored,

for instance, the Prussian government’s propagation of the so-called ‘Basilikenstil’

(fig. 12), based on early Christian models, because it had no roots in Germany. The

system of Gothic architecture was more suitable for modern adaptations in

Schnaase’s opinion, but he saw the disadvantage that it was too elaborated to permit

further developments in the present (fig. 13). The Romanesque style was, however,

on account of its simplicity and openness to new developments, the most

appropriate for use by contemporary architects. As an example, Schnaase cited the

new village church of Callenberg in Saxony: the architect used Romanesque forms



15

to create a new spatial solution which was not typical for a Romanesque church (fig.

14).34

Figure 14 St. Katherine’s church, 1845-48, Callenbach (Saxony), contemporary engraving.

Diathek TU Dresden

Thus Schnaase supported – like Kugler in a short remark in his handbook35–

the application of the Rundbogenstil (Round-arched style).36 This style represented

the most important attempt to create an autochthonous architecture of the

nineteenth century in Germany. It was only loosely connected with historical styles

such as the Romanesque and the early Italian Renaissance. The conception of

Rundbogenstil had been established by Heinrich Hübsch, architect in Karlsruhe (fig.

15), who published a book in 1828 with the famous title: In welchem Style sollen wir

bauen? (‘In which style shall we build?’).37 Today, this title is usually seen as an

34 Karl Schnaase, ‘Die neue Kirche zu Callenberg im Königreich Sachsen. Nebst einer Vergleichung der

Stilarten des christlichen Kirchenbaues’, Christliches Kunstblatt 1860, 1-12. 35 Kugler, Handbuch, 857-858. 36 There are relatively few studies on the conception of Rundbogenstil: Dieter Dolgner, ‚Der

Rundbogenstil – Ein Versuch der architektonischen Erneuerung im 19. Jahrhundert’, Wissenschaftliche

Zeitschrift der Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen Weimar 27, 1980, no. 4, 199-210; Kathleen Curran,

‘The German Rundbogenstil and reflections on the American round-arched style’, Journal of the Society

of Architectural Historians 47, 1988, 351-373; Wolfgang Herrmann, ed., In what style should we build? The

German debate on architectural style, Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the

Humanities, 1992 (Texts & documents); Ulrich Maximilian Schumann, ‘A Renaissance consciously

unconscious? Heinrich Hübsch and the round-arch style (“Rundbogenstil”)’. In: Frédérique Lemerle,

ed., Le XIXe siècle et l’architecture de la Renaissance, Paris : Picard, 2010, 153-163. 37 Heinrich Hübsch, In welchem Style sollen wir bauen?, Karlsruhe: Verlag Chr. Fr. Müller, 1828. Cf. Silke

Walther, ‘In welchem Style sollen wir bauen? Studien zu den Schriften und Bauten des Architekten



16

Figure 15 Heinrich Hübsch, Façade plan for Polytechnical School in Karlsruhe, 1832. Diathek TU Dresden

expression of the supposed arbitrariness of the choice of architectural styles in

nineteenth-century historicism, but actually it stands for a program of modern

building. A main advocate of this new system was Schnaase’s friend Rudolph

Wiegmann, an architect in Düsseldorf. Wiegmann articulated his wish for greater

innovation in architecture and art in an article about the ‘development of a modern

national building style’, published in 1841:

In the realm of spirit there is no circulation; in the realm of spirit there is only

a steady flow of occurrences – no beginning, no end and no return – only

progress. And for that reason, our present and all future art won’t ever take

on a former shape. And in the cases where it attempts to do so, it remains

beyond the fertile soil of the present and is hovering in the air, a fading art.38

Wiegmann’s opinion was shared by Schnaase, who not only ruled out the

end of art and its return to former states and conditions, but also the possibility of

directing the trend of future art. In that respect, a dossier about the development of

contemporary architecture written for King Maximilian II of Bavaria in 1860 is of

particular interest. In 1850, this king had announced a competition for the invention

Heinrich Hübsch (1795-1863)’, PhD thesis, University of Stuttgart, 2004, http://elib.uni-

stuttgart.de/opus/volltexte/2004/1936/. 38 ‘Im Reiche des Geistes giebt es keinen Kreislauf, im Reiche des Geistes giebt es nur einen stetigen

Fluß der Erscheinungen – keinen Anfang, kein Ende und keine Wiederkehr – nur Fortschritt. Und

deshalb kann unsere und alle zukünftige Kunst eine schon einmal dagewesene Gestalt nie wieder

annehmen. Und wo sie es versucht, steht sie außerhalb des fruchtbaren Bodens der Gegenwart und

schwebt verwelkend in der Luft.’ Rudolph Wiegmann, ‚Gedanken über die Entwicklung eines

zeitgemäßen nazionalen Baustyls’, Allgemeine Bauzeitung 1841, 207-214, esp. 210. Similar ideas may be

found in: Rudolph Wiegmann, Der Ritter Leo von Klenze und unsere Kunst, Düsseldorf: J. H. C. Schreiner,

1839, esp. 49-56.



17

Figure 16 August Voit, Project of a place in Munich, example of “Maximilianstil”, 1850. Diathek TU Dresden

of a new building style, the so-called ‘Maximilianstil’, with deceiving results.39

According to the plans of the architect August Voit, a new district of Munich,

including some government buildings, was erected (fig. 16), but the highly

ornamental hybrid system of Gothic and Renaissance elements found no success as

a new building style. Ten years later, Voit asked some prominent persons, mainly

architects, for dossiers about the tendencies of contemporary architecture. Schnaase,

the only art historian, advised the king in his paper from November 1860 against all

attempts to influence the development of architecture because it could only follow

the fundamental structures of its time. Thus he wrote that even Greek and Gothic

revival buildings reflected the character of the nineteenth century.40

As could be demonstrated, in the decades around 1850 various art historians

and architects shared common views concerning the development of art and

architecture from past to future times. So it may be justified to take a closer view of

an architect who was one of the most original historians of culture and art. Gottfried

Semper (1803-1879) (fig. 17) was born five years after Schnaase and five before

Kugler, his adversary in the heated question of polychromy in ancient architecture.

Semper was one of the few architects in history who excelled in the same degree as

39 Cf. Eberhard Drüeke, Der Maximilianstil. Zum Stilbegriff der Architektur im 19. Jahrhundert, Mittenwald:

Mäander Verlag, 1981; August Hahn, Der Maximilianstil in München. Programm und Verwirklichung,

Munich: Heinz Moos Verlag, ca. 1982. 40 Unpublished dossier: Munich, Geheimes Hausarchiv München, Nachlass Max II., 77-6-90.



18

Figure 17 Portrait of Gottfried Semper, anonymous pencil drawing, 1834. Zurich, gta Archiv / ETH Zürich, Nachlass

Gottfried Semper: A.IV.a.I. Author’s archive

both builder and theoretician.41 Strangely enough, he wrote little about architecture,

and still less about his own buildings. He dedicated most of his studies to the

41 There is an abundant bibliography on Gottfried Semper; some of the most important works of the

last decades: Heidrun Laudel, Gottfried Semper. Architektur und Stil, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1991;

Harry Francis Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper. Architect of the Nineteenth Century, New Haven and London:

Yale University Press, 1996; Winfried Nerdinger and Werner Oechslin, eds., Gottfried Semper 1803-1879.

Architektur und Wissenschaft, Munich: Prestel Verlag and Zurich: gta-Verlag, 2003; Mari Hvattum,

Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Michael

Gnehm, Stumme Poesie. Architektur und Sprache bei Gottfried Semper, Zurich: gta-Verlag, 2004; Henrik

Karge, ed., Gottfried Semper – Dresden und Europa. Die moderne Renaissance der Künste. Akten des

Internationalen Kolloquiums der Technischen Universität Dresden aus Anlass des 200. Geburtstags von

Gottfried Semper, Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2007; Rainald Franz and Andreas

Nierhaus, eds., Gottfried Semper und Wien. Die Wirkung des Architekten auf ‘Wissenschaft, Industrie und

Kunst’, Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2007; Sonja Hildebrand, ‘Gottfried Semper’, in:

Ulrich Pfisterer, ed., Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1: Von Winckelmann bis Warburg, Munich: C. H.

Beck Verlag, 2007, 62-75; Hans-Georg von Arburg, Alles Fassade. ‘Oberfläche‘ in der deutschsprachigen

Architektur- und Literaturästhetik 1770-1870, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008, 264-344.



19

analysis of applied arts and ornament in his own day, and to theories concerning

the earliest stages of human artistic creativity.42 His most productive years as royal

architect in Dresden (fig. 18) came to an end in 1848, when he had to leave Saxony

on account of his revolutionary activities. London, his place of refuge, didn’t offer

him work, but it did inspire him, thanks to innovations in industrial arts and design

initiated by the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Figure 18 Gottfried Semper, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger façade, 1847-55. Dresden. Photo: Henrik Karge

As a result, Semper published in 1860 and 1863 the two monumental

volumes of Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten (‘Style in the technical

and tectonic arts’), which are exclusively dedicated to the archaeology of such

applied arts as ceramics and textiles, which he saw as the basis of all human artistic

creation.43 In contrast to the art historians Kugler and Schnaase, Semper didn’t try to

42 The first complete reprint edition of Semper’s works is now appearing: Henrik Karge, ed., Gottfried

Semper, Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols., Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Olms-Weidmann, 2008-2013.

Vols. 2-4 have already been published; vol. 1, which contains the smaller writings in chronological

order and a general introduction of the editor, is about to appear. 43 Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, oder praktische Ästhetik. Ein

Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler und Kunstfreunde, vol. 1, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Kunst und

Wissenschaft, 1860, vol. 2, Munich: Friedrich Bruckmann’s Verlag, 1863. Reprint edition: Semper,

Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Karge, vols. 2-3, 2008. English translation: Gottfried Semper, Style in the

Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics, introduction by Harry Francis Mallgrave, trans. Harry

Francis Mallgrave and Michael Robinson, Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2004.



20

write a coherent history of the (applied) arts. He looked instead for archetypes and

fundamental conditions of the creation of artistic objects in early cultures,

presuming their continuous effectiveness through all epochs of civilization until the

present time.

Figure 19 Gottfried Semper, Palais Oppenheim, 1845-48, Dresden (destroyed). Historical photograph.

Author’s archive

In his architectural practice, Semper looked to the Italian Renaissance, and

especially to the palazzi of cinquecento Rome and Venice, as a reference for his own

buildings (fig. 19). In so doing, he adhered to the same evolutionary model of

artistic development from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries as did Schnaase

and Kugler.44 On the other hand, Renaissance architecture played a surprisingly

44 About the ‘invention’ of the Renaissance style in the nineteenth century and its inclusion in the wider

concept of ‘modern’ architecture: Henrik Karge, ‘Renaissance. Aufkommen und Entfaltung des

Stilbegriffs in Deutschland im Zuge der Neorenaissance-Bewegung um 1840’, in: Walter Krause,

Heidrun Laudel and Winfried Nerdinger, eds., Neorenaissance – Ansprüche an einen Stil. Zweites

Historismus-Symposium Bad Muskau, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2001, 39-66. Semper’s adaptation of

Italian Renaissance models has been analysed by Gisela Moeller, ‘“Solange Steine reden können.“ –



21

small role in Semper’s writings. It was the Rundbogenstil and its Romanesque and

Byzantine roots that were of major importance for his ideas about the future

development of architecture.

Figure 10 Gottfried Semper, Project for Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas) in Hamburg, 1844. Diathek TU Dresden

These ideas were first formulated in Semper’s polemical publication Ueber

den Bau evangelischer Kirchen (‘About the construction of Protestant churches’) from

1845. He wrote this essay to defend his position in the vehement debate about the

reconstruction of the church of St. Nicholas in Hamburg after the great fire of 1842,

which had become a central battlefield in the ‘war of styles’.45 Semper’s project of a

domed church on a centralized plan followed the principles of the round-arched

style and was accentuated by Renaissance and Byzantine elements. Although it had

won first prize in the competition (fig. 20), in the end George Gilbert Scott’s project

Zur Formsynthese von Antike und Renaissance bei Gottfried Sempers Bauten der Dresdner Jahre’, in:

Karge, Gottfried Semper – Dresden und Europa, 161-174. 45 Gottfried Semper, Ueber den Bau evangelischer Kirchen. Mit besonderer Beziehung auf die gegenwärtige

Frage über die Art des Neubaues der Nikolaikirche in Hamburg und ein dafür entworfenes Project, Leipzig: B.

G. Teubner, 1845; new edition: Gottfried Semper, Kleine Schriften, ed. Manfred and Hans Semper, Berlin

and Stuttgart: Verlag W. Spemann, 1884, 443-467. (Reprint: Semper, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, 2008,

ed. Karge; reprint of original version in preparation for vol. 1).



22

Figure 11 George Gilbert Scott, Nikolaikirche, 1845-63, Hamburg (partly destroyed). Historical photograph. Diathek

TU Dresden

of a church in Gothic form, which was supported by the radical Protestant faction,

was chosen and built (fig. 21). The experience of this competition intensified

Semper’s aversion towards the fundamentalist currents in the Catholic as well as the

Protestant Churches of that time – and towards all attempts at a Gothic revival.

In his book on Protestant church building, Semper rejected both the

architecture of early Christian times, the so-called basilica style – Schnaase, too,

would later adopt this position – and the Gothic architecture as starting-points for

conceptions of present-day buildings. He recommended instead the round-arched



23

Figure 12 Katholikon of monastery, around 1080, Daphni near Athens, interior with dome. Diathek TU Dresden

style with its Romanesque and Byzantine roots46 – the Renaissance elements of his

church project didn’t play a role in his theory. Semper had become interested in the

churches of the Byzantine Empire since journeying through Greece. Later he would

develop a detailed analysis of Byzantine cross-dome-churches (fig. 22) in his travel

account ‘Reise-Erinnerungen aus Griechenland’ (‘Travel memories from Greece’),

which was published in 1858.47 In Ueber den Bau evangelischer Kirchen, Semper saw

these Greek-Byzantine churches as models for the gallery constructions in

Protestant churches. German Romanesque architecture appeared to him a

multifaceted system of national character which had not evolved organically

because of the adoption of the pointed arch from the French Gothic system. Present-

day architects had the opportunity, therefore, to develop the still-unrealized

potential of Romanesque architecture – an architecture characterized, according to

Semper, by a ‘greater simplicity and variety in the building masses’; in Semper’s

46 Cf. Dieter Dolgner, ‘Gottfried Semper und der Rundbogenstil’, Architectura 11, 1981, 157-182. 47 Gottfried Semper, ‘Reise-Erinnerungen aus Griechenland’, Frankfurter Museum. Süddeutsche

Wochenschrift für Kunst, Literatur und öffentliches Leben 4, 1858, 153-159, 335-338, 734-739, 984-989, 1005-

1007, 1064-1068, 1088-1093, esp. 734-739 (‘Byzantinische Bauten und Anwendung ihres Styls auf die

Neuzeit’); new edition of the first passages, without the analysis of Byzantine churches: Semper, Kleine

Schriften, 429-442. (Reprint: Semper, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, 2008, ed. Karge; reprint of complete

original version in preparation for vol. 1). Cf. for the cultural and political implications of the concept

‘Byzantine style’: Jeanne-Marie Musto, ‘Byzantium in Bavaria: Art, Architecture and History Between

Empiricism and Invention in the Post-Napoleonic Era’, PhD thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 2007.



24

opinion, the beauty of Byzantine and Romanesque churches had a special effect on

the human mind comparable to music or poetry48 – an idea similar to that which

Karl Schnaase had expressed in his early work Niederländische Briefe from 1834.49

Some of Semper’s arguments concerning Protestant church building, such as

his polemics against the Gothic revival, would recur in his lecture Ueber Baustyle

(‘About architectural styles’), which he gave in Zurich in 1869.50 At the same time,

the architect denied the possibility of inventing a new style. In Semper’s opinion,

societal change and a new world view were the prerequisites for the emergence of

new building styles.

At this point, Semper’s and Schnaase’s lines of thought were actually

converging. Schnaase published in 1870 a favourable review Semper’s lecture Ueber

Baustyle in an article which was dedicated to the perspectives of the present and

future of the art: ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft der Kunst’.51 In the second review of this

article, Schnaase criticized – very much like Semper in similar cases – the negative

attitude of a religious author towards the reality of modern life. Schnaase pointed

out that the empirical and ‘atomistic’ structure of the natural sciences, just like the

naturalistic approach of contemporary art, could not revert back into a religious

culture of organic uniformity.52 By contrast, in the short first review Schnaase

showed deference to the ‘famous, ingenious master of architecture’ and recognized

Semper’s approach to the future of art and architecture as being much like his own.

Especially Semper’s opinion that a new building style could only evolve on the basis

of profound cultural innovations, of a new universal idea, found special favour with

Schnaase.53 In the introduction to his article, Schnaase emphasized in a highly

concentrated sentence that the formation and interpretation of contemporary art

required a vision of the future as well as continuity with the past:

The appreciation of the art of our time and, to this end, of the art of the

previous era is no useless game; it will always arouse ideas about the

48 ‘Die eigentlich architectonischen Schönheiten der byzantinisch-romanischen Kirche lassen sich in

ihrer Wirkung auf das Gemüth mehr mit der Musik oder der Poesie vergleichen. […] Es gehört dazu

eine größere Einfachheit und Abwechselung in den Massen […]“ Semper, Ueber den Bau evangelischer

Kirchen, 21. 49 Schnaase, Niederländische Briefe, ed. Karge, 409-410. In a general way, the similarities between

Schnaase’s and Semper’s lines of thought have already been detected by Michael Podro: Podro, Critical

Historians, 44. 50 Gottfried Semper, Ueber Baustyle. Ein Vortrag gehalten auf dem Rathhaus in Zürich am 4. März 1869,

Zurich: Verlag Friedrich Schulthess, 1869; new edition: Semper, Kleine Schriften, 395-426. (Reprint:

Semper, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, 2008, ed. Karge; reprint of original version in preparation for vol.

1). 51 Karl Schnaase, ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft der Kunst’, Christliches Kunstblatt 1870, no. 3, 33-41, 52-59,

including reviews of works by Gottfried Semper, Karl Christian Planck and H. Holtzmann. 52 Review of Karl Christian Planck, Gesetz und Ziel der neueren Kunstentwickelung im Vergleiche mit der

antiken, Stuttgart: Ebner & Seubert, 1879, in: Schnaase, ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft der Kunst’, 34-41. 53 Schnaase, ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft der Kunst’, 34.



25

Figure 13 Gottfried Semper, Caribbean hut from Trinidad, engraving in: Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen

Künsten, vol. 2, 1863, 276

desired future, about the aims to which contemporary art must turn and, in

such a way, gain influence over its destiny.54

Schnaase’s vision of a fundamental coherence of past, present and future art

was nearly identical with Semper’s, but this sense of temporal continuity didn’t

determine the architect’s fortuna critica. Semper’s writings have had lasting impact

on the self-image of architects in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries not

because of his evolutionary theory of contemporary style, but on account of his

archaeological investigations into creativity. The archetypes of the design process

which Semper detected in the early cultural stages of mankind and in remote parts

of the present world (fig. 23) offered creative patterns which seemed independent

from the cultural contingencies of the succeeding epochs. These ‘eternal’ patterns

54 ‘Die Würdigung der gegenwärtigen Kunst und zu diesem Zwecke der ihr vorhergegangenen, ist

kein müßiges Spiel; sie wird immer Vorstellungen über die zu erstrebende Zukunft, über die Ziele,

denen jene sich zuwenden muß, erwecken, und dergestalt Einfluß auf ihre Schicksale erlangen.’

Schnaase, ‘Gegenwart und Zukunft der Kunst’, 33.



26

had the advantage of freeing architects from the relativity of history; they seemed to

offer objective laws of creation. As distinct from Hegel’s integration of art into

history and Schnaase’s and Kugler’s balance between art and history, Semper tried

to release the process of artistic creation from its immediate historical models by

referring to fundamental archetypes. These archetypes, presented as valid for all

time, including the future, left no place for an end of art. Rather, they stood for a

vision of a distant past which tends to reduce the perspectives of history. At the

same time, Semper always emphasized the importance of the continuity of cultural

epochs. His oeuvre thus offers models both for the modernist negation of history

and for the present recovery of historical consciousness in the arts.

Henrik Karge received his doctorate in art history at the University of Mainz in

1986; his thesis addressed the cathedral of Burgos. From 1987 he served as Assistant

Professor of Art History at the University of Kiel; in 1994 he received his habilitation

from this university for work about Karl Schnaase. Since 1997 he has served as

Professor of Art History at the University of Technology of Dresden.

[email protected]

Documents

Projecting the Future in Germany of the nineteenth century